The involvement of Egyptians in establishing an antiquities museum in Egypt
dates back to the period of development of the antiquities museum in Europe
between the 1780s and 1830s, with the conversion of the royal palace in Paris,
the Louvre, into a museum, and the reconstruction of the British Museum in London
as a building devoted substantially to antiquities. The early nineteenth century
AD scholar al-Jabarti commented on the collecting activities of Europeans in
1817, but this was before European states had agreed to acquire large collections
of Egyptian antiquities (Reid 2002:
39-40). Within a generation, the AD 1835 15 August decree by Mohamed Ali, inspired
by Rifaa al-Tahtawi, included the following observation:

'It is well-known that Europeans have buildings for keeping antiquities - stones
covered with paintings and inscriptions, and other such objects are carefully
preserved there and show to the inhabitants of the country, as well as to travellers...
Such institutions bring great renoun to the countries that have them.' (from
Reid 2002: 55-56)

The decree envisaged a Museum in Cairo to house the finds of Egyptian antiquities
inspectors, under the supervision of Yusuf Diya Effendi. Sadly, when the European
scholar Richard Lepsius arrived from Berlin in 1842, Mohamed Ali told him that
the project had not succeeded. However a collection had been begun, and there
was a second antiquities collection, comprising finds from Luxor excavations,
on display in one of the palaces of Ibrahim Pasha, son of Mohamed Ali.

In the reign of the next governor, Abbas I (ruled 1848-1854), official inspections
are recorded for Upper Egypt and the Cairo area. The location and scope of the
collection of antiquities seem not to be recorded in European sources: on one
account it was moved to the School of Engineering in Boulaq in 1849, but another
account has it moved to the Cairo citadel from a palace in the Ezbekiya quarter
of Cairo in 1851. As recurrently in all museum histories, the government did
not always respect the integrity of the collection; it seems that Abbas I presented
part of the collection to Sultan Abd al-Aziz, and that his successor Said presented
the remainder to Archduke Maximilian of Austria in 1855.

These collecting and inspecting activities from 1835 to the 1850s form the
background to the decision of Said (1854-1863) and Ismail Pasha (ruled 1863-1879)
to support Auguste Mariette from France as head of a refounded Maslahat Antiqat
(or Maslahat al-Athar) 'Antiquities Service' in 1858. On 1 June Mariette became
mamur al-antiqat 'director of antiquities' on an Egyptian government annual
salary of £720. The same month provides the first entry in the register
for the refounded Museum. Following, consciously or not, in the footsteps of
Yusuf Diya Effendi, Mariette employed foremen at key sites from Aswan to Gizeh,
to clear out large monuments and send the sculpture finds to Cairo. There are
limited European-language sources for Egyptian participation in and view of
this period of the Antiquities Service and the Egyptian Museum, Cairo; archival
material such as the lists of Egyptian foremen and workers on foreign excavations
could help to fill this gap, but the story can probably only be written from
publications and archives in Arabic and Turkish (until the mid-19th century
the language of government in Egypt).

The expanding collection was moved in 1902 to a new building on Tahrir Square,
where it remains today, an incomparable treasure house for Egyptian antiquities.

The key Egyptian Egyptologist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
is Ahmed Kamal (1851-1923), who succeeded in his scientific career despite the
French directorship of the Antiquities Service, down to the 1952 revolution,
and the British military occupation of Egypt from 1882 to independence in 1922
and to a greater or lesser extent thereafter until the 1952 revolution. With
the arrival of Gamal Abd al-Nasser in 1952, all leading positions were transferred
from Europeans to Egyptians.

The Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo

In 1869, Ismail Pasha issued a decree on preservation of historic monuments,
at a time when he was remodelling Cairo. During the period when the nationalist
Ahmed Urabi and his supporters dominated government, just before the British
occupation, Khedive Tawfiq decreed the establishment of a Committee for the
preservation of monuments of Arab art, with a Museum of Arab Art to house the
materials salvaged in their work (1881). The committee members were mainly European,
but Egyptians included the cabinet minister Ali Mubarak (1823-1893), and Ali
Bahgat (1858-1924), who took over the directorship of the Museum when the Austrian
Max Herz lost his position as citizen of an enemy state in the First World War.
At the same time directorship of the library over the Museum moved from the
German philologist Arthur Schaade to Ahmed Lutfi al-Sayyid.

The Coptic Museum, Cairo

Coptic was the name given by sixteenth and seventeenth century Europeans to
the Christian minority in Egypt, and to their language, the latest phase in
the history of the ancient Egyptian language. Following suggestions at the end
of the nineteenth century, in 1914 the Coptic Museum was founded by Marcus Simaika
(1864-1944), a wealthy Copt and leading figure in encouraging Coptic interest
in the Coptic past. Simaika won the support of the traditionalist patriarch
of the Coptic Church, Cyril V (in office 1874-1927). The Church provided the
land for the Museum, in Old Cairo, against the walls of the ancient Roman fortress,
as well as many of the exhibits. In 1946 king Farouk opened the new museum building.